sixteen years and upward, women as well as men, under pain of death; and
many prisoners who having the oath tendered them, refused or declined
it, were sentenced, and executed all in one day, according to the tenor
of their proclamation. And, moreover, they, on this occasion, renewed
their orders and commission to the soldiers, for pursuing and chasing
after the rebels (as they designed them) more vigorously and violently,
and to shoot, or otherwise put them to death wherever they did light
upon them. In the midst of this confusion of slaughter and bloodshed,
GOD cut off by death, _February_ 6th, 1685, that vile person, the author
and authorizer of all this mischief, _Charles II_, who, _Antiochus_
like, came in peaceably, and obtained the kingdom by flattery (_Dan._
xi), reigned treacherously and bloodily, and like that wicked king,
_Jehoram_ (2 _Chron._ xxi), died without being desired or lamented,
poisoned, as was thought, by his unnatural popish brother. And,
notwithstanding of all his bastards, begotten in adultery and
fornication, at home and abroad, he died without any to succeed him,
save him that was said to have murdered him. GOD pursued him with the
curse of _Hiel_ the _Bethelite_, for his rebuilding of that cursed
_Jericho_, prelacy; and of that impious and wicked tyrant, _Coniah_
(_Jer._ xxii), for his treachery and cruelty; "Thus saith the LORD,
Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days,
for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting any more upon the throne
of _Israel_."

12. Notwithstanding the abundant proof that the duke of _York_ had
given, in many instances, and in both kingdoms, of his being a vassal of
antichrist, and notwithstanding of his open and public profession of
papistry, upon his brother's death, fairly warning all what they might
expect, yet were not those, who sat at the helm of affairs, deterred
from committing the reins of government into his hands; but contrary to